Wisconsin native, conservative critic of everything.
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." ---G K Chesterton
"The only objective of Liberty is Life" --G K Chesterton
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions" --G K Chesterton
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

Thursday, September 03, 2009

$1 Million Campaign Database, $1 Deliverable?

Kevin Kennedy is taking fire for having spent $1 million on a new campaign finance database. Offhand, that fire seems justifiable.

When making a judgment about whether that $million was spent well, it's useful to look at what Kennedy will have to "fix."

Kennedy said changes would include:- Making the user interface easier to use and feature fewer steps, eliminating those where people have routinely made errors.- Eliminating a requirement that campaigns choose a donor's occupation from a standardized list. When donors had jobs not on the list, campaigns complained they were forced to guess at which one most closely matched reality.- Eliminating a requirement that campaigns choose from a list of donors already in the database. The feature was designed to allow the public to easily search for a particular donor's contribution. But Mason said some entries featured inaccurate information and Kennedy acknowledged it has not worked well.- Making the system compatible for campaigns that do not use standard Microsoft operating systems and Internet browsers.- Telling dial-up Internet users they can e-mail their reports to the board to be filed in the system.

Kennedy said the agency will meet Thursday with its software vendor, Bloomfield, Conn.-based PCC Technology Group, to make additional changes

Maybe Kennedy should ask PCC Technology what planet they live on, too. A state-wide system which is incompatible with dial-up 'net, and incompatible with Mac is a system for which someone has overpaid, Kevin.